Wednesday, July 14, 2010

Scars and Sad Stories

Wow...it's been a loooong time since I updated this blog. Life has gotten busy and this is something that falls by the wayside.

Anyway, I was reading during my lunch hour today, as I most often do, and came upon a passage that I thought was beautiful, wonderfully written and made me do some thinking, so I thought I would share it. It's from "Little Bee" by Chris Cleave (which, although I've only read 1 1/2 chapters, I highly recommend).

"...I ask you right here please to agree with me that a scar is never ugly. That is what the scar makers want us to think. But you and I, we must make an agreement to defy them. We must see all scars as beauty. Okay? This will be our secret. Because take it from me, a scar does not form on the dying. A scar means,I survived. In a few breaths' time I will speak some sad words to you. But you must hear them the same way we have agreed to see scars now. Sad words are just another beauty. A sad story means, this story-teller isalive. The next thing you know, something fine will happen to her, something marvelous, and then she will turn around and smile."

The thing that struck me is how often I hate my scars and sad stories. And I don't know if believing that they are somehow beautiful will ever make me love them fully, but I think, if I believe it's true, it changes (or should change) the way I think about the things that I've been through. The things that have scarred me, sometimes deeply. The idea that I can look at the scar or the sad story and be thankful that I'm alive...that I survived the experience, is beautiful. Because I think the outcome could have been different in some cases. And I'm not talking about physical scars here, but emotional ones. And I recognize that my scars and sad stories are most likely many people's happy stories. But I think we all have had things happen in our lives that we have not escaped unscathed. So maybe the scars are sometimes a good thing. They remind us to live because our lives could very easily be so much worse. At least, this is what I'm now telling myself in reference to the scars and sad experiences in my own life that I struggle to deal with.

Of course, my mind then goes to all the scars and painful, sad experiences I know people have had and I think that there's no way that scar can be beautiful, or a good thing. I don't know how to work it all out, but it's something I've been thinking about.